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devops and psychological safety
In Technology  ·  In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
DevOps for Psychological Safety

Psychological Safety and DevOps Practices This is a special edition article by Balázs Szakmáry Developing software of any real complexity is a task that goes well beyond one person and one computer. The people, the machines, and the processes involved […]

May 23, 2024
Human Organisational Performance (HOP)  ·  In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Theory and Research
Non-Violent Communication (or “Giraffe Language”)

Non-Violent Communication (or “Giraffe Language”) I saw this great post by Robin Weinick on LinkedIn about her bowl of tiny giraffes, and it reminded me to share a photo of our own “Speak Up Giraffe”! This giraffe is passed around […]

May 17, 2024
psychological safety timeline
In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety – A Timeline

The increase in awareness and popularity of psychological safety I thought it would be interesting to look at the frequency of the search term “psychological safety” over time, and map certain events onto that. If you head to Google Trends, […]

May 3, 2024
Photo by Seven Shooter on Unsplash
In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
Reading Fiction Builds Empathy

Leadership and Empathy One of the most powerful capabilities that leaders and managers can possess is empathy. Arguably, the same could be said for anyone – we can best understand and help others when we’re able to see the world […]

April 26, 2024
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
In The Workplace  ·  Theory and Research
Hard to Say I’m Sorry

Hard to Say I’m Sorry: Apologies in the Workplace Guest post by Jonathan Cohen, MD It shouldn’t be a surprise that good apologies are not the norm. There are several reasons for this. Most of us have not undergone formal […]

April 26, 2024
types of silence
Human Organisational Performance (HOP)  ·  In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety  ·  Theory and Research
Types of Silence

Types of Silence The authors of this literature review “Silence in organizations and psychological safety” from 2015, describe a number of group dynamics that can lead to silence, and more interestingly, describe a few different types of silence, drawn from […]

April 19, 2024
psychological safety icebreakers
Create and Maintain  ·  In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety  ·  Theory and Research
Icebreakers

Icebreakers If you’re anything like me, when you see “icebreakers” on an agenda or schedule for a meeting, you immediately become a little anxious. Ice breakers are intended to make us feel more comfortable and at ease, increasing the overall […]

April 12, 2024
PACE - probe, alert, challenge, emergency
Create and Maintain  ·  Human Organisational Performance (HOP)  ·  In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
PACE: Graded Assertiveness

Psychological safety is about creating a climate in which we feel able to take interpersonal risks in order to communicate our ideas, concerns and issues – and we want to be able to speak up in a way that we […]

April 5, 2024
In The Workplace  ·  Psychological Safety
Socioeconomic background affects our appetite to take interpersonal risks at work.

Research by KPMG shows that people from working class families took an average 19% longer to move up a grade in their roles, or as much as up to a year, compared to those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. A number […]

April 5, 2024
Image shows a student holding her books in a classroom. She is smiling while other students are sat at their desks.
Newsletter
Psychological Safety for Students

Personal Experiences of Psychological Safety through Education By Beatriz Poyton In schools, psychological safety is hard to create but easy to destroy. My own feelings of psychological safety, and willingness to put myself and my ideas forward at school were […]

April 4, 2024
Man sitting at desk - Tom Geraghty psychological safety
In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Theory and Research
Psychological Safety is Political

In the real world, psychological safety is political. There are some who say that psychological safety isn’t political. We think it is.  What does “political” mean? At its broadest level, politics determine the ways people in groups make decisions. This […]

March 28, 2024
Diagram showing the findings of Google's Project Aristotle and the five characteristics of high performing teams - 1. Psychological safety, 2. Dependability, 3. Structure and Clarity, 4. Meaning, 5. Impact
Human Organisational Performance (HOP)  ·  In The Workplace  ·  Measure  ·  Newsletter  ·  Theory and Research
Google’s Project Aristotle

How psychological safety captured the world’s attention For a while, from around 1999 to 2014, psychological safety was a relatively well known term in academia, but barely known in the world of practice, the world of work itself. Then, a […]

March 28, 2024
road safety
In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter
Psychological Safety Newsletter 153

Psychological Safety in the World Soft SkillsWhilst I’m not really keen on the term “soft skills” (because really, the soft stuff is the hard stuff), this is a good article by Rebecca Knight on improving your soft skills as a remote […]

March 22, 2024
Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash
Human Organisational Performance (HOP)  ·  In Technology  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
Evolution of Leadership and Management in Healthcare: Lessons from Aviation and Crew Resource Management.

Introduction As a result of the ever-increasing scale and complexity of healthcare systems, hierarchies and layers of management have become increasingly necessary (Kumar, 2021). These facilitate operational capability, both in terms of scale and complexity, but also lead to sometimes […]

March 19, 2024
In The Workplace  ·  Psychological Safety  ·  Theory and Research
Psychological Capital

Psychological Capital: Foundations, Team Dynamics and the Role of Leadership, Culture, and Neurodiversity AbstractPsychological capital (PsyCap) has emerged as a pivotal construct in organisational research, encapsulating the positive psychological resources that individuals draw upon to navigate work-related challenges. This article […]

March 18, 2024
psychological safety and AI
In Technology  ·  Psychological Safety
Can I feel psychologically safe when interacting with a machine?

An Unlikely Confidant: How AI Became My Private (PsychSafe) Oasis for Public Victory by Navya Adhikarla Psychological safety, a concept traditionally applied to group dynamics, refers to the feeling of being able to speak up, take risks, and make mistakes […]

March 15, 2024
In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Theory and Research
I can say whatever I want! 

I can say whatever I want!  When I met up with Amy Edmondson recently in Boston (yes, this is a humblebrag and I’m owning it!) we discussed one of the prevalent misconceptions around psychological safety: that it means we can say […]

March 15, 2024
Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash
In The Workplace  ·  Learning and Development  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
Making it safe(r) to fail in teaching 

Making it safe(r) to fail in teaching  By Jade Garratt, Director of Education, Iterum Years ago, I was lucky enough to teach in an amazing secondary school English department. Teachers’ enthusiasm for developing their practice was infectious and there was […]

March 8, 2024
psychological safety 101 newsletter
In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
Issue 150: Celebrating Three Years of the Psychological Safety Newsletter

The psychological safety newsletter is now three years old! The first issue went out on February 19th, 2021 to just 139 people, and you can read it online here. And this is issue 150! Over these 150 issues we’ve evolved […]

March 1, 2024
Tom Geraghty
In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety Case Study

Psychological Safety Case Study: The Sales Team One of the most popular requests from the newsletter feedback survey was for some case studies of psychological safety in practice, so here’s the first one! It’s an interesting case that illustrates why […]

February 23, 2024
Newsletter
Psychological Safety and the Ancient World

Guest Post by Beatriz Poyton The term psychological safety is believed to have originated in 1954 by clinical psychologist Carl Rogers. William Kahn has since defined psychological safety as “the sense of being able to show and employ one’s self […]

February 22, 2024
In The Workplace  ·  Learning and Development  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
Psychological Safety Newsletter #148

Psychological Safety at Work Psychological Safety in Schools This is an excellent piece on the EdCan Network website on the importance and dynamics of psychological safety for students. The authors make a few key points – psychological safety and inclusion […]

February 16, 2024
Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash
Newsletter
Affordability Based Pricing

Reflections on affordability based pricing We’ve been running open-enrolment psychological safety workshops for just over two years now, and right from the start I wanted to make sure that they were accessible to everyone. There’s an important reason for this: […]

February 16, 2024
civility saves lives
In The Workplace  ·  Newsletter  ·  Psychological Safety
Civility Saves Lives

Civility Saves Lives If you wanted to completely destroy any psychological safety in the group, what would you do? If you wanted to create a culture of fear, where nobody felt safe to speak up, suggest ideas, highlight concerns, or […]

February 9, 2024
In The Workplace  ·  Psychological Safety
Do attachment styles impact leaders (and therefore psychological safety) in the workplace?

In a word, yes.  The importance of mental health and well-being is now being recognised in the workplace. Some would even argue it’s being respected. Though not universal in its reach, this new attitude is seeing employers investing in a […]

February 5, 2024
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